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school bells ring across the diocese

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

It’s official. All of the Belleville diocesan Catholic schools opened for business by last week, and by all accounts, students and teachers are ready to get to work on a new school year.

At Blessed Sacrament in Belleville, kindergarten teacher, Pat Mottershead, said things were off to a good start. It was the first full day of class with all of her students, and they were finding their name tags and getting settled as the 8 a.m. bell rang.

Mottershead has been welcoming kindergartners for the past 28 years, and from the looks of it, she still enjoys meeting and greeting each of her students as they come in for class.

One dad stayed outside the classroom after dropping off his son. It didn’t look like he wanted to leave, and principal, Claire Hatch, said both parents were in the hall crying the day before when they left their son for his first day of school.

The child had been ill as an infant, and now, here he was, strong and, according to Hatch, a sweet young child, making the first break with family. It was touching, she said.

Hatch said the school has been given a bit of a face lift with projects here and there, and every classroom now has an interactive Smart board, and teachers will be engaging their students with the latest technology.

Hatch watched as kindergarten parents dropped off their youngsters, and pointed out parents who were students when she was teaching second grade more than a few years ago.

Enrollment at Blessed Sacrament is up with a few new students in every class, Hatch said.

Across town at Our Lady Queen of Peace School, principal Sharon Needham said fall sports have begun with baseball, softball and soccer leading the way. Needham said the faculty is accepting applications now for leadership roles with the school’s young St. Vincent de Paul Society, now in its second year.

Last year, the leadership team came up with projects and involved the whole school in participating.

Those projects included partnering with Rosewood Care Center in Belleville with primary grades making cards for residents for holidays and older students decorating residents’ doors and making lap robes.

The young Vincentians also raised money with a raffle for “Smile Train,” an international agency for cleft palate surgery.
“It was a real teaching moment,” Needham said, as students watched videos about the discrimination youngsters experienced because of the congenital birth defect. The school raised $600.00 to send to the agency.

Young Vincentians at Queen of Peace also collected food for food pantries and toys for Catholic Urban Programs at Christmas time.

Other diocesan Catholic schools that have young Vincentian councils are: Althoff Catholic High School, Blessed Sacrament, St. Mary & St. Augustine, and St. Teresa Catholic grade schools, all in Belleville; Holy Trinity Grade School in Fairview Heights; Mater Dei High School in Breese; St. Clare in O’Fallon; and St. James in Millstadt.

All Saints Academy in Breese remains the largest of the diocesan Catholic elementary schools with 346 students in pre-school through eighth grade.

Pat Huene, All Saints administrative assistant, and someone who has worked at the school for 30 years, said the one constant in all those years has been the welcome students receive each year.

“It’s a joy to see the students interact,” Huene said. “A child can come in at any age and that child is welcomed into the class. It amazes me to see how they all fit in.”

All Saints students come from many of the communities in Clinton County, including Albers, Aviston, Beaver Prairie, Beckemeyer, Breese, Carlyle, Damiansville, Marydale, St. Rose and Trenton. They also have a student from Lebanon this year.

Another of the larger schools, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Herrin, has 309 students in pre-k through eighth grade.
Again, as at the other schools, OLMC has experienced growth in many of the classes.

Technology has been expanded at OLMC this year, too, principal Cheryl Patterson-Dreyer, said.

The sixth-eighth-graders will be using laptop computers, and the school is just finishing installing white (Smart) boards in classrooms.

So, according to all those interviewed for this glimpse of the first week of school, everything is going well in spite of the skittish stock market and questions about how much impact the economy would have on enrollments at Catholic schools. Never underestimate the power of prayer.